Sydney Chase, president and owner of XavierC, said her company owns 15 machines that make the balls. Each is capable of producing 20 million a year, but one machine is producing enough for the company’s current needs.

XavierC’s offices are in Glendora and the balls are produced at a facility in Colton.

Chase, who has worked in the manufacturing industry for 30 years, said she started XavierC in 2013.

“We just finished a project with the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District in Calabasas,” she said. “They took in close to 1 million balls and we’re working with several others including a waste water treatment plant in Southern California.”

Shade balls have been used for water-quality compliance at other DWP open-air reservoirs, including Upper Stone, Elysian and Ivanhoe, since 2008.

The Granada Hills reservoir is the DWP’s largest and contains more than 3.3 billion gallons of water. It was put into service in 1977.

A similar product called bird balls have been used where water collects along airport runways to keeps birds away.